Homosexuality

The Language of Homosexuality

Cases of same-sex desire and same-sex sexual relations have been recorded throughout history and across cultures. These are often cited as evidence for the transhistorical and cross-cultural existence of homosexuality. Social and cultural theorists distinguish between these cases and the specific phenomena of “homosexuality” that has been discussed in expert (sexological, medical, psychological, and legal) discourse since the 19th century. In this latter context, homosexuality was assumed to be a pathological condition based on the “abnormal” sexual desire for a person of the same sex. The terminology of homosexuality emerged in European expert discourse about sexuality toward the end of the 19th century. This was initially used in conjunction with ideas about homosexuality as gender inversion—that is, to explain homosexuals as persons whose sexual desires were rooted in innate gender dysfunction. Homosexuality was the dominant way of talking about same-sex desire for much of the 20th century; this discourse contributed to the notion that sexual desire was a defining property of the person. The language of homosexuality was crucial to the discursive construction of morally deviant sexual practices and pathologically deviant personalities. This laid the ground for experts and legislators to define, outlaw, and seek to correct sexual deviance and was crucial to how modern societies defined abnormal and unnatural (homosexual) sexualities as the binary opposite of normal and natural (heterosexual) sexualities.

The power of the discourse of homosexuality is partly evident in the ways men and women themselves took up the language in their own understandings of their desires, identities, and practices. The dominance of the discourse among experts and lay people alike meant that male homosexual experience was often generalized to “homosexual” women. The failure of a female-specific language of same-sex desire to take hold partly indicates the extent to which female sexuality was defined by male desires and lacked autonomy.

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